Middle East

Three quarters of American voters say that the Iraq War is a very important or extremely important issue for them. I talk around the country on Iraq and I also find widespread concern about and interest in the subject. A smart television news program that gave renewed attention to Iraq instead of ignoring it would […]

Remember how John McCain insisted to Wolf Blitzer that the security pact being negotiated by Iraq and the Bush administration talks about the withdrawal of US troops as “conditions-based” rather than tied to a strict timetable? That was not true of the draft, which called for US troops out by 2011 but did contain language […]

Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh on Tuesday backed off his earlier support for the US raid into Syria. He said that the Iraqi constitution forbids third parties to use Iraq as a staging ground for attacks on other countries. It is not clear whether Dabbagh was just issuing a pro forma condemnation or whether the […]

US government sources maintained on Monday that the cross-border raid into Syria that left 8 dead had succeeded in killing “Abu al-Ghadiyah” (Badran al-Mazidi) of Mosul, a member of the fundamentalist vigilante group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (originally called “Monotheism and Holy War” but more recently “The Islamic State of Iraq”). Al-Zarqawi was killed in […]

Ambassador Gerald B. Helman writes: Absent the unexpected, it is unlikely that a security agreement in the form of a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the US will be in place before our Presidential elections and almost as unlikely before the end of the year when the present UN Security Council mandate […]

Although the US public trusts Sen. Barack Obama to handle the economy far more than it does Sen. John McCain, the two are viewed as equally able with regard to handling Iraq and the ‘war on terrorism.’ Of course, given that the public in earlier years had tended to give the edge to Republicans on […]

The Iraqi Islamic Party, led by Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, said it was suspending further high-level contact with the United States on Saturday. The Sunni fundamentalist group is angry about a raid in Fallujah in which US troops killed a member of the IIP. The US military contends that the man opened fire on […]

McClatchy reports that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has reneged on the security agreement that his office negotiated with the Bush administration, and now says he will not sign it and will not submit it to parliament. Instead, it is likely that Iraq will go back to the United Nations Security Council for a further mandate […]

A car bomber attacked a convoy he thought was conveying the Iraqi labor minister, Mahmoud al Radhi on Thursday, killing 13 persons and wounding 24, according to McClatchy. Al Radhi is a member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a fundamentalist Shiite party close to the ayatollahs in Tehran. […]